Moving With Toddlers Sucks. Here’s How I Made It Easier

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When I moved with my young children, I gave them jobs and abandoned all screen-time rules. Read on to learn what else I did to make it through. 

Recently, I had to move houses with an almost-4-year-old and a 13-month-old. If you are a parent reading this, you know that does not sound like a very good time.

While I was happy I had sold my home and was excited to get a mortgage loan and buy a new place that was a better fit, first I had to deal with the huge hassle associated with relocating with small children underfoot.

Thankfully, I did find some techniques that ended up making the process at least a little bit easier. Here’s what I did.

I gave the kids jobs to do

I knew the kids would want to be involved with some aspects of the move. Unfortunately, “help” from small children often makes jobs take 1,000 times longer — and sometimes leads to things getting broken.

To make sure I directed my kids’ attention to things they could do without causing damage, I planned a list of jobs for them throughout the process. They were given a special box to pack up their (non-breakable) toys and books, for example. And they were in charge of carrying pillows out to be boxed up.

Because they felt like they were part of the team, they were a lot more cooperative with letting me get things done.

I broke the move down into small parts

Since toddlers demand a lot of attention, I didn’t have a lot of uninterrupted blocks of time to take care of organizing and packing. So, I broke the move down into small parts rather than trying to do everything at once. I’d pack a few things here and there when I had spare moments, or clean out one shelf of a closet while they were distracted by something else.

We divided and conquered on moving day

On the actual moving day, we decided that rather than trying to have both my husband and me involved — with the kids underfoot– we’d split up the tasks. One of us would watch the kids while the other did their part of the moving process. For me, this was being there to help the movers finish up whatever packing was left in the house. And for him, that was being there to help the movers when they were loading stuff onto the truck to take to storage.

We hired some help with part of the process

One of the best things we did to make the moving process easier was to hire some help. We didn’t want to take too big of a hit to our bank account, so we didn’t have the movers do everything.

We had them pack up a few breakables (like dishes in kitchen cabinets) and then we had them physically move the stuff onto the truck and help my husband unload it at the storage unit. We paid hourly, and while it was an investment, it was worth it — especially since our prep work meant that we didn’t have to pay too much.

We abandoned all screen-time rules during move prep

Finally, when we were actually trying to get ready the day before the move, we abandoned our screen-time limits. While we are usually careful about how much our kids watch, desperate times called for desperate measures.

If you’re a parent, I hope these tips will also help you make moving with young kids easier. Or, you could just wait until they are adults, which is why we hope not to move again for decades once we’ve settled into our new home.

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